In the past, cup guns were not provided with reversible spray tips, even though it was known to provide spray tips which were rotatable in a direction perpendicular to the spray direction to provide orientation of a fan-shaped spray pattern from a vertical to a horizontal orientation. To clean an obstruction from such tips, including the rotatable tips, it was necessary to remove the tip from the gun, a time-consuming and somewhat involved process.
In a different field still related to spraying paint, it was known to use turrets with reversible tips in airless spray painting systems, where the spray gun is connected to a remote paint pump by a high pressure hose. In such systems, the pump and paint reservoir were too large to be combined with the spray gun, and thus were located remote from the hand held spray gun, supported by the floor (indoors) or the ground (outdoors). However, heretofore, reversible spray tips were not available for cup guns.